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Tag: ideas

Snifferson & Solvito: Paws on the case

Published by Paolo on 19/08/2024

I discovered that AEVI, a local association that helps game developers in Spain, activated a help plan for independent developers. They help you financially with the development of a prototype.

My first solo dev game in Unreal Engine is taking shape! I am excited, and I am willing to keep things very small and doable. I want to make a complete game in 6 months, and I can add 2 more for QA and debugging but that’s it.

My intention is to keep things fairly simple:

  • You control a police dog and your goal is to help your human companion solve a case
  • No dialogues, just emojis to express emotions. I want to avoid too many terms to translate. You can develop a relationship with your human colleague which will help you during levels
  • As a dog, you can find valuable items (+$) but also damage the environments (-$) and this will influence the economy of the central station
  • Everytime you perform some action you will learn more abilities during the level which can be useful to solve the case, so you decide
  • No violence, PEGI 12, E10+ game. Explosions and shots will be funny using ragdolls and silly animations

Dog game

Published by Paolo on 16/08/2024

When I was younger I was addicted to TV shows with a policeman and a dog. The most famous one was called Tequila & Bonetti. I still remember that piano music that Bonetti played at night, recalling his dark past.

I am studying Unreal Engine and I had an idea: an action game with a story where you are the dog and have to solve situations to move forward with the story.

For now it’s called simply “Dog game”, I am implementing the first mechanics.

Follow here the development of this game

Podcasts and analysis paralysis

Published by Paolo on 14/08/2024

I am an avid podcast consumer. I love them, they are a bridge to knowledge that is hard to get otherwise. Through podcasts, I can listen the words of true experts. And for FREE.

As with everything in life, it comes with a cost. When I work on a project, I have clear references to consider. Often, those are words from experts that I got through a podcast. And, most of the time, those are words that stop some creative impulse.

It’s because podcasts are about things that already exist. Often, things that failed and why they failed. Sometimes, experts are not actual doers, but just analysts.

Discernment is a great quality to have for your creativity.

Creating content

Published by Paolo on 12/06/2024

“The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.” (G. Orwell, 1984)

Videogames, like music, are perceived by some people working or investing in them as “content”. That’s where the very concept of creativity starts to be corrupted up to a level that is hard to answer quickly to some issue.

Creativity to me has more to do with removing things than adding. It’s like you throw the clay, or something like that, and then you start to dig material away from it.

Everyone who worked with me can confirm this, I start very ambitious and then I work shoulder by shoulder with engineers and artists to remove stuff. It’s better to have 1 thing well polished than 5 generic. It’s better to enhance a strong part of a game than to create a new mode to sustain the weakest ones.

The dopamine culture wants content, and it’s harder to see this simple truth.

The Action Man fantasy

Published by Paolo on 10/06/2024

What I really liked to see yesterday at Microsoft’s XBOX Showcase 2024 was the presentation of the new Call of Duty.

I am never been a COD fan, and I have never played that game too much. But I liked the developers’ interview explaining how they changed a single thing, the fantasy, to innovate meaningfully on the whole game.

The new fantasy of the “action man” led to a whole new set of features and animations. Some of them is designed for new audiences who, like me, are not experts playing that game. Refreshing!

Impressive and you can see how the game design is definitely a role shared among the whole team.

World Tetris Day (the day after)

Published by Paolo on 07/06/2024

I just discovered that yesterday was the World Tetris Day. The history of Tetris is incredible, they made movies and documentaries on that.

I like to hear stories about game design as an invention. Most of the time we work with projects, not inventions. Inventions in creativity have the potential to create nostalgia.

I like vision statements like “games that will be remembered forever”. They mean to work to develop a market, not just saturate it to extract profit.

The day after World Tetris Day I wish you to invent something new.
Have a great weekend everybody!

Are you holding or are you hosting?

Published by Paolo on 05/06/2024

Game design uses technology to create entertainment. Entertainment is one of the words that have been corrupted in certain contexts.

In the dopamine culture, the dream of many is to attract the attention of the “users” and trap them forever. Entertainment is read as a synonym of “holding”, which is semantically correct.

Entertainment to me has much more in common with hospitality, instead. The act of being friendly and welcoming to guests and visitors.

Also in the Bible, we can read different translations (Hebrews 13:2):

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

King James Version

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

English Standard Version

It’s your call: entertainment as trapping the people’s attention versus entertainment as showing hospitality.

Are you holding or are you hosting?

Mine is always the latter, I create entertainment for human beings (and maybe angels, who know?), not monkeys.

First sparks

Published by Paolo on 17/05/2024

There is some magic in the very first idea that comes to your mind when you start any creative endeavor.

When you start working on something new, it can be a project but also simply a task, you have that first intuition. In my experience, that first spark is often the most important one.

Some of the best songs in music history have been written in a few hours, too. And with creativity in general, it often happens the same.

But of course, this is just my sensation, I have no metrics, no data, no information to back it up. I don’t know if there is a general rule, a thesis, behind this.

I like to appreciate the beauty of things and not everything has to be estimated, measured, controlled, or predicted.

Long live the first sparks. They come out of nowhere, but more often than not they are the best choice.

On sacrifice and duty

Published by Paolo on 10/05/2024

When you are an employee you are there because you can do the job. Also because you can make THAT specific job, you master certain pipelines according to your level of experience. Finally, you are there because you can work in a team.

When you build your own company, you are working on creating an environment that permits your employees to build a business.

When you are a freelancer, you have a 1-person business that helps clients (usually companies) solve specific problems.

The social media era, the dopamine times in which we live suggests us “not to work for other people’s dreams”. That’s a weird lens to use to see the World. We forget the importance of sacrifice and duty for our societies to prosper.

There are different sets of skills that you need according to what you want to do. It’s not easy for me to suggest “Hey, did you lose your job? You are an expert, why don’t you build your own company?”. The responsibilities you have to tackle are completely others, and your experience will probably give you also a lot of biases. And most importantly, you should focus on the business, not on the pipelines.

The odds for a specialist to be successful in a completely different field are higher than in building a business in the same sector. The games business is full of doctors who built successful companies.

Some game designers out there can help solve wicked problems, outside of games. At this moment we have quite a few of them. That’s my wish, honestly.

A forest

Published by Paolo on 09/05/2024

When I walk in a wood, I focus my attention on the path and stop to admire the trees. Some of them are like monuments, they grew a lot. Fantastic!

Then I discover maybe a little mushroom that has grown during the same night. That mushroom will last a few hours or a couple of days.

I don’t give too much attention to the little herbs, the underwood that’s everywhere. It’s common behavior, I think. Still, they are an important part of the view and the smell that I get from the experience.

The fact is that the big tree exists and it’s big thanks to the whole biome which permits that. It’s impossible and surreal to think in a forest made out only of trees with no herbs.

The underwood is fundamental to the ecosystem, it’s what permits the big trees to be big in the first place. And the underwood can grow up to a certain point, that’s a quality, not a limitation.

If we want more trees and a bigger forest, we should let the underwood spread more and not cut it off just because it’s not tall enough.